In 750 BC, the
full-bodied image of Medusa in Greece is a central piece on
their oldest surviving temple, that of Artemis, one of their
oldest gods. She is the Lady of the Beasts who carries with
her memories of Crete and Angolia ... Soon the holy image of
the gorgon Medusa as an ancient symbol of female power and
wisdom became totally unacceptable. By the 6th c. BC her rites
were disrupted, her sanctuaries invaded, the sacred groves cut
down, her priestesses were violated and her image defiled. Her
images, (as well as women) are mastered and domesticated. Her
mask was used on elaborate Etruscan lantern fixtures and
stoves, probably for her relation to alchemical fire. Although
the mask was widely used by country folk, her female wisdom,
natural forces, powers of creativity, destruction and
regeneration were demonised and made evil. She was made into a
horrid, ugly monster (most monsters were female or born of the
Earth). Her most popular image became that of her defeat in
the Athenian myth of Perseus.

Medusa's Star

In the constellation of Perseus, at
twenty-six degrees of Taurus, there twinkles the binary star
Algol, the 'Gorgon's head'. Homer's Iliad alluded to,
"the Gorgon's monstrous head, that rippling dragon horror"[2] - a severed head which turned to stone those
who beheld it. It was only men, plus a few animals, who met
this dire fate, not women. Perseus had to be careful never to
look at the severed head. "The Medusa reveals the extent of
their death to all who gaze upon her". [3]

Originally, the Medusa was worshipped
in Libya as the serpent-goddess. Her dread-lock hair style
proclaimed her African origin. Her name translates as
'sovereign female wisdom,' although in another legend where
she was one of the three Gorgons it meant 'ruler': the other
two Gorgons being 'wanderer' (Euryale) and 'strong one'
(Sthenno).

"Beyond all others she [Medusa] was
famed for her beauty ... Words would fail to tell the glory of
her hair, most wonderful of all her charms - a friend declared
to me he saw its lovely splendour"[4]

- wrote the Roman poet Ovid. He told
how once-beautiful Medusa was raped by Neptune in the temple
of Minerva (i.e. Athena), and was punished for this as
if it were her fault by the offended goddess (Athena, as the
goddess of male wisdom and science, was taking a dim view of
the older, priestess-type of wisdom), whereby her lovely locks
turned into hissing serpents. Earlier, she had lost her
immortality (of the three gorgons, she was the mortal one)
then she lost her beauty through the wrath of Athene, and
finally she lost her head, being beheaded by Perseus as she
slept in a cave with the other Gorgons.

The Greeks
constructed a fine tableau of constellation-images centred
around Perseus. Beside Perseus is ebony-coloured Andromeda.
Her mother Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopea, had boasted that her
daughter was lovelier than the sea-nymphs. The indignant
sea-nymphs complained to Neptune, and so Andromeda ended up
bound and left naked by the sea-shore, an innocent victim. Was
Medusa raped by Neptune likewise an innocent victim? These are
'It was all her fault' stories that have come down from
antiquity. The Perseus myth contrasts a horrid woman's head,
once that of the sage goddess-oracle, with the body of the
'good' girl, who is fancied by Perseus. We are shocked to see
his sword in the sky pointing to between her legs. He rescues
her and they marry, but her family were not happy about this,
and he ends up killing half of the wedding-guests. This Hero
leaves a trail of destruction in his wake; we are confident
that he will hack his way through to the solution. The story
may have been a parable of Greek imperialism in Africa.

Embedded in the Milky Way,
the Perseus constellation is the source of the 'Perseid'
meteor shower of late summer. Meteor showers emanate from a
'radiant,' which is a source-point in the heavens. Other
meteor showers have more or less stationary radiants, but that
for the Perseids moves during August along the sword of
Perseus, and his upraised arm.[5] These meteors are made of iron and burn up in
the sky, as their radiant sparkles along Perseus' deadly
blade, moving past the longitude of Algol. The latter, a
binary star, rotates with a dark companion that almost
eclipses it, once per three days, so it grows dimmer and
brighter. To find it in the sky, just follow two of the stars
of Cassiopea downwards, through the straight line of four
stars in Perseus, and it's just to the right of these, above
Taurus. In the summertime Taurus remains below the horizon in
the UK. Far below, the sea-monster Cetus, coming to get
Andromeda, flicks a fin into the zodiac.

A Millennium Cross over Algol

In 1996 the bright
comet Hyakutake passed very close to the Earth, nearer than
any comet for centuries, and crossed over Algol on April 11th.
Then, only a year later, another bright comet appeared,
Hale-Bopp, and both of these were totally unexpected. It
appeared on a path at right angles to the previous
comet-track. It also just happened to cross over Algol, and it
did so a mere day earlier, April 10th.

".. it was inevitable the paths of these two
comets would cross but why in Medusa's head (almost right
between her eyes) and why exactly on the same day, April 11th,
one year apart?" [6]

The astronomical world remained
silent about this remarkable astral synchrony in time and
space, even though April 12th is Astronomy Day. As a
millennial portent, it looked fairly dire.

Using the 'Starry Night' program, the
two comets look more or less identical as they cross over
Algol.

Britain's Foot-and-Mouth Epidemic

In the year
2001, the worst-ever Foot-and-Mouth epidemic struck. The
burning of British cows began at the end of February 2001, as
Saturn in Taurus came within a degree of Algol. Jupiter and
Saturn, conjunct the year before, were ten degrees apart and
both in the Bull constellation. The Ministry of Agriculture,
Food and Fisheries (MAFF) decision to go for mass
extermination as remedy for a mild, temporary disease causing
no harm to humans seemed like the reasoning of a head that had
become disconnected from the body of British farming. Only a
tiny, tiny proportion of the cows slaughtered were ever shown
to have been infected. Saturn, always traditionally viewed as
the planet of agriculture, remained within a degree of Algol
through most of March.

It was a holocaust, with nearly
four million farm animals slaughtered. Computer boffins in
London (at Imperial College and the Royal Society) advised the
government, overruling the advice of the recognised experts on
foot-and-mouth who were advocating a very different course.[7] As corpses were shovelled into mass landfills
and funeral pyres burned across England, the madly-deranged
official logic justifying all this seemed to resemble the
writhing of Medusa's serpents. One is haunted by the memories
of MAFF officials in Cumbria hunting out pet goats owned by
children to kill them. Then MAFF itself dissolved in May, from
guilt too terrible to bear, morphing into a more forgettable
acronym.

MAFF had no shred of legal right to enter
farms full of healthy cows, to exterminate them. There were a
very few such farms which had the moral backbone to challenge
the legality of this, and in each such case MAFF backed away.
The terror they wielded was like Medusa's gaze, which
paralysed the will of farmers, permitting the officials to
enter. Vets up and down the country betrayed the sacred
Hippocratic oath of their profession, to protect life and not
take it, as they wrote the 'official' notes permitting the
army to enter and kill. There were two phials of Medusa's
blood that Athena gave to the physician Asclepius, one from
her left side and the other from her right: one would kill,
and the other would cure. The first of these was here used.

The Vivid Algol-Types

The great 20th-century Spanish
artist Pablo Picasso had Jupiter conjunct Algol. Cubism began
with his famous Demoiselles d'Avignon, an in-your-face
grouping of whores with the viewer as client. This new
brutalism ushered in the twentieth century, with the female
form disintegrating under his torture. His agonising
Guernica is a passionate denunciation of the horrors of
war. The Existentialist Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre also had
Jupiter on Algol: his philosophical conclusions, "Man is a
useless passion" and "Hell is other people" seem rather
Algol-ish.[8] Around 1940/41 at his Jupiter-Algol return he
became a prisoner of war and is said to have experienced his
most productive period.

This star makes vivid, intense
people. The freedom-fighter Joan of Arc (Algol conjunct
Saturn) was burnt at the stake. The dancer Isadora Duncan
(Algol conjunct Pluto) died as her scarf caught in the car
rear wheel. The ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn (Algol conjunct
Mars) had a husband who was shot in the neck, leaving him
paralysed: he had to watch her wonderful movements, himself
immobile. John Lennon (Algol conjunct Uranus) was shot in the
back. Stephen King (Algol conjunct North Node), master of
horror, whose books keep turning into films, nearly died after
being run over by a truck, and should have died, but somehow
recovered. Heart-throb Johnny Depp (Algol conjunct Venus), had
to grapple with a headless fiend in Sleepy Hollow, and
found out who Jack the Ripper was, in From Hell.

"Algol represents a strong consuming passion
that may devour you with anger and rage. If one can contain an
unconscious compulsion to take revenge, and from that passion
return a more productive outcome, Algol is one of the most
powerful stars in the sky. Whatever planet it affects in your
chart will be charged with strong, intense sexual energy that
has the potential to be wonderful, of if repressed, to lead to
rage or violence." [9]

Brady's words apply to Picasso, but
in a rather unpleasant manner, as (one gathers) he used to
give a picture to husbands whose wife he seduced. They also
apply to Princess Diana (Algol conjunct Venus) who kept a
vibrator sex-aid device as her lucky mascot, which had to
accompany her on official visits. [10]

Diana described life with her husband
as "real, real torture".[11] She found death with her true love, mangled
in metal. She was the 'People's Princess', our 'Queen of
Hearts', and her life gave a brilliant expression to that
Venus Algol-contact. She chose her stirring wedding-hymn, I
vow to thee, my country, sung to Hosts's Jupiter-theme
(suitably accompanied by - as they walked down the aisle - the
Jupiter-Saturn conjunction just rising above the horizon, at
noon of 29th July, 1981). Its words:

"the love that asks no questions, the love
that pays the price, and lays upon the altar, the final
sacrifice" [12]

were appropriate. She showed a
positive way to use this heavy star, by touching AIDS victims,
walking through minefields and hugging the disinherited.

Her bodyguard Sergeant Barry
Mannakee became too close to her, and did what a bodyguard
isn't meant to do, soon after which he ended up decapitated
from a motor-bike accident on May 14th, 1987.[13] Prince Charles informed her about this tragic
event in a brutally casual manner a day or so later as she was
getting out of a car to meet some photographers - close to or
maybe on the day of Sun conjunct Algol! Di was distraught and
was convinced that Mannakee had been bumped off by MI5. This
was the time in her life when mortal fear entered her soul:
with Pluto transiting her Neptune, Saturn on her ascendant and
the Sun crossing her Venus-Algol.[14] Her longest-lasting affair was with James
Hewitt, and ended - he revealed to the BBC - after he received
several warnings to discontinue his relationship with the
Princess, lest a similar fate befall him.[15] An MI5 agent visited his London flat and
warned him, "If you do not stop seeing Diana you will suffer
the same fate as Barry Manakee and die in a road accident". [16] He took the advice.

According to
Diana Rosenberg, Algol in a chart doesn't necessarily mean
that one will inflict or be the victim of horror and mayhem:

"you will not be able to ignore suffering and
horror, or brush it aside... The Algol placement on a chart
insists upon a confrontation and assimilation of these harsh
aspects of human experience in this lifetime. Some of the
fixed stars are harsh, yes. But to a purpose. Each defines an
area that will be tapped for good or ill; the tests are
intense and unavoidable. Algol, like other stars, confers
tasks upon us which, if comprehended and accepted, offer great
rewards of power and creativity. These stellar challenges are
not to be feared, but understood and used in a positive
manner." [17]

The Guillotine

The French monarchy in the 18th
century had strongly associated itself with solar symbolism -
le Roi soleil, and all that - so it seems appropriate
that a solar eclipse marked its demise. The eclipse of May,
1790 was on Algol.[18] The French Revolution hinged around it: its
ringing declarations of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity came
the year before, then the Guillotine followed swiftly after.
In June of 1790, the newly-elected government of France
abolished nobility and titles. King Louis XVI fled into
hiding, but he got caught.

Joseph Guillotin was a
sensitive young man, who just wanted to take the pain out of
dying. One would hardly feel a thing, he explained. The
Guillotine, as it came to be called, was agreed upon in
December, 1789. It was first used on April 25th, 1792, in
Paris, so its construction was over the Algol-eclipse. At its
first use, Mercury stood within a couple of degrees of that
eclipse-position, two years earlier. The King of France was
beheaded on the morning of 21 January, 1793, after the Moon
that night had crossed over Algol. The 'Great Terror'
descended between June and July of 1794, when heads were
a-rolling by the thousand. Saturn (aka the Grim Reaper)
reached Algol in mid-June, 1794. On June 10th a law was
passed, "establishing the regime known as the Great Terror. In
future there will be no preliminary questioning of defendents
or witnesses ..."

A mystical mood of ecstasy arose. On
June the 8th in Paris,

... the entire country today celebrated what
has been termed 'The Supreme Being and Nature'. From early
morning, the residents of this city were decorating their
houses with flowers and leaves and making their way through
the Tuileries to join a procession led by Maximilien
Robespierre himself, carrying an ear of wheat.[19]

Indeed, according to the poet
William Wordsworth:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven. [20]

A guiding figure here was
Robespierre, the lawyer and diplomat, who said that "Terror is
nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible". But,
in late July even he had to submit to the Guillotine ...
facing upwards. "See how nice Saturn can be?" was Diana
Rosenberg's laconic comment. The period of Terror ended
abruptly, as soon as Saturn had finished transiting over
Algol. The French kept their Guillotine, until the 1970s.

Tesla, the Electrical Wizard

To discern a more constructive
side to this demon-star - which isn't easy - we turn to the
chart of Nicola Tesla. As the quintessential mad scientist,
his visions set the world a-throbbing with A/C electricity.
The problem here is that his chart had virtually no Uranus
aspects, except for a rather weak quintile. Its Uranus does
however conjunct Algol, to half a degree, and this is, I
suggest, a key to his genius. Consider the following account
of one of his lecture-demonstrations, in the year 1893, by his
most recent biographer:

Extending his fingers like a preening
peacock, the electric sorcerer issued flames of lightning as
if he were Thor himself. "The streamers offer no particular
inconvenience" he assured the audience ... With his coil still
charged and flames still shooting from his head, a number of
other effects were displayed including the running of motors
by way of energy through his body and the lighting of a
variety of colourful tubes which the inventor waved about as
if they were phosphorescent rapiers... After the lecture, he
was shimmering from after-effects and still emitting ethereal
flames and fine haloes of splintered light. [21]

Do these effects resemble the
writhing snakes around Medusa's head? Tesla's demonstrations
always involved coils and mysterious lamps, the latter being
lit up from a distance, without wires. Rich financiers begged
him to manufacture these, it was what they most desired. The
financial nightmares that so undermined his life would have
been solved at a stroke if only he could have done that - but,
he never could, or at least he never did, and to this day
no-one knows how they worked.

At his
Uranus-opposition, as Uranus moved into opposition with Algol,
Tesla's technology harnessed the power of Niagara Falls, a
thing he had dreamed of doing as a child. A celebratory dinner
was organised at Niagara, at this apogee of Tesla's career,
and America's top engineers and electricians gathered to
celebrate and pay homage. Halfway through Tesla's speech, he
had to be hustled off the stage with an excuse that he had to
leave, because his speech started moving onto bizarre themes
of 'free energy' beside which the energy of Niagara Falls
would pale by comparison ...[22] Perhaps his unaspected Uranus had this
meaning, that no-one could predict or direct the course of his
unfathomable genius.

Uranus on Algol and WWII

Uranus was criss-crossing
over Algol, during World War II. As London was being battered
by air-raids, it stationed there on September 1, 1940. Each
night through that month the Luftwaffe bombed London. The
raids reached a terrible climax on the night of 29th of
December with incendiary terror-bombing:

"During these hours the flames seemed to be
roaring and raging from one end of the City to the other; the
glare was like daylight, and the streets were filled with
driving galaxies of sparks".[23]

Miraculously, amidst the
burning city, St Paul's cathedral was spared. Jupiter and
Saturn met three times over 1941/41, and then transited Algol
a few months later. On May 6th of 1941, Jupiter conjoined
Uranus exactly on Algol, as Stalin (Algol conjunct Pluto)
became Premier of the Soviet Union. A few days later on May
10th, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Uranus all conjoined
over it. That night saw a climax of air attacks by over three
hundred Luftwaffe bombers dropping incendiaries and heavy
explosives on London, igniting churches and public buildings.
The House of Commons and Westminster Hall were devastated, to
avenge a RAF attack on Berlin.

Seeking for a date
connected to the Holocaust, Diana Rosenberg found the 'Wannsee
Conference' in Berlin on 20th January, 1942, when the decision
to undertake the 'final solution' was made: to build
death-camps and to convert existing slave-labour camps into
them. Uranus then re-conjuncted Algol and became stationary.
The RAF started its deliberate policy of city incineration
('strategic bombing') on March 28th, 1942 (Algol conjunct
Saturn) with a night-raid on Lьbeck, destroying that historic
city.

The first atom bomb had Mars on Algol. A
mushroom cloud rose over the sands of New Mexico, produced by
a grapefruit-sized lump of plutonium. On July 16th 1945, with
Mars within 20 arcminutes of Algol,[24] the desert sands of Alamogordo turned to
glass. 'Pluto's element' went critical. The power of the atom
was unleashed in this event, codenamed 'Trinity' by Robert
Oppenheimer. Albert Einstein (Algol conjunct Pluto) had no
inkling of the dire consequences lurking in his equations,
until after Pluto's appearance in 1930. He then wrote to
Rooseveldt, advising that the Bomb should be built. His advice
was taken - much though he regretted this, in later years.
(The first controlled nuclear-fission chain reaction took
place three years earlier on December 2nd, 1942 when Enrico
Fermi's team at Chicago switched on a uranium pile, as the Sun
conjuncted Antares, 'Heart of the Scorpion').

Two Rock' n' Roll Groups

If there is such a thing
as the astrology of rock'n'roll, then Uranus' stationing twice
on Algol 1940-42 has to be pretty central. In the 1940/41
war-period, John Lennon and Bob Dylan were born with Uranus on
Algol, with six months separating their births. In the late
fifties Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe became friends at art
college in Liverpool, and may have been lovers. Born close in
time, they had a Uranus-Uranus conjunction over the
demon-star. It was Sutcliffe who proposed the name 'Beetle'
[sic] for the group that was gathering around himself and
Lennon.

In Hamburg, in May 1961, a drugged-out Lennon,
"seized with one of his fits of uncontrollable rage", beat up
his aesthete friend, who ended up on the pavement being kicked
repeatedly in the head by Lennon - wearing his pointed
'winklepicker' shoes.[25] Sutcliffe lost consciousness, and Lennon ran
off in a panic.[26] It gradually became evident that the former
was somehow afflicted, and then alas that he was dying, which
happened on 10th April 1962. The post-mortem ascertained the
cause of death as a brain tumour, and revealed an indentation
below the ear, next to the brain injury, the result of a
traumatic incident.

Stuart Sutcliffe and John
Lennon in 1960

Within months of this death, the
Beatles as we know them had come together: they could only
form, once Sutcliffe had departed. Only years later did Lennon
confess his haunting secret: his inner torment he expressed in
Cold Turkey, his terrible guilt in Instant
Karma. His career was framed between the death of his best
and closest friend in 1962, and himself being killed in 1980,
under equally spooky circumstances. If the lunar nodes are
concerned with fate and destiny, their 18.6-year cycle
measured out the interval between the death of 'fifth Beatle'
Stuart Sutcliffe by Lennon on 10th April 1962 and Lennon's
death by Chapman on 7th December 1980 - to within one
degree. Instant karma came and got him. I guess the
Hamburg fight was in mid-May, as the Sun transited Algol, and
the two natal Uranus positions of Sutcliffe and Lennon.
Without Lennon's terrible act, the Beatles could not have
existed.

Lennon's Moon is opposite Pluto
and his Sun is in a close quintile to it, appropriate for his
Plutonic fate. He was born and killed on Jupiter-Saturn
conjunctions, in trine to each other, the first of which
squared a lunar-node axis present symmetrically at both of the
deaths. There are profound geometric structures in this
chart.

Sir Mick Jagger has his Moon on Algol.
This is relevant to his songs about women, for example: She
was skilled in the arts of deception, I could tell by her
bloodstained hands, or Help me, please doctor, I'm
damaged/ There's a pain where there once was a heart/ The girl
I'm to marry is a four-legged sow ... and the brutality in
his treatment of them. Matter, mater.

Rivalry
existed, in the early Rolling Stones group, as Brian Jones
(Algol conjunct Uranus, the latter stationary) kept getting
more fan mail than Jagger. The creative power of this group
came from a Mars-Moon synastry between these two, right on the
demon-star - for the seven years that Jones was in it. Their
first number one hit It's All Over Now (blaming Her for
everything) was produced at the start of their first American
tour in June 1964, just as Mars was crossing over Algol. They
were staying at a studio with blues singer Muddy Waters,
where, they felt, the very sound of rock'n'roll had been born
- a suitable venue for this Algol transit. Its vibrant
Mars-energy made everyone get up and dance.

Brian Jones and Mick Jagger in
1965

Brian Jones became increasingly dissolute and
unreliable from excess drugs and drink, until eventually the
group had to get rid of him. Or, in another version, he was
discovered reading the Bible to his grandmother, and viewed as
being not 'bad' enough to be a proper Rolling Stone. Either
way Jagger told him that he had to leave, as was announced on
June 9th, 1969. Weeks later, Jones was held underwater in his
own swimming-pool by an irate builder (at ten o'clock at night
on July 2nd), who afterwards sloped off and eluded
prosecution.[27] It was in A.A. Milne's house at Ashdown
Forest in Surrey, surrounded by statues of Christopher Robin
etc., that the lone Stone sank. The death at
twenty-seven years of the talented young man who had brought
the Rolling Stones together was made to appear as some kind of
consequence of his dissolute lifestyle (Like Jimi Hendrix, he
died at his Uranus-trine return). Venus was then conjunct
Algol to within the arcminute, Neptune was in
opposition within half a degree, and Venus was conjunct the
IC. Astral symbolism doesn't come better than that! Jones and
Jagger had a joint Algol-transit on that night, terminus for
The Stones' sitar player. A free Hyde-Park rock concert
scheduled for July 5th could not be cancelled: butterflies
were released, and some lines of Shelley's Adonais were
read out by Jagger in memoriam, to a crowd of half a
million.

We can now see what the two greatest
rock-and-roll bands of all time had in common! Their lead
singers had direct Algol contacts to their natal charts, and
each group had an artist who drew it together in the
beginning, both of whom also had direct Algol contacts - and
both of these were mysteriously bumped off in their prime:
the horror-scope of Algol. Astral philosophers may here
wish to exhume those early Rolling Stones records. The macabre
demise of these rock icons has been in each case documented in
not one but two books published on the subject. [25-27]

'I am petrified by ...'

Medusa/Algol is what
petrifies us. Saddam Hussein, torturer, has his Mercury on
Algol. Iraq's war with Iran was the longest of the 20th
century, in which over a million died. The Ayatollah Khoumeni
of Iran had his Sun on Algol, so a dire Algol Sun-Mercury
synastry was present between the two implacable war-leaders.
How different things would have been, had those neighbours,
formerly Persia and Chaldea, not fallen out! Here was the myth
born: as Perseus in the story (named after 'Persia') flew over
the desert sands, drops of Medusa's blood fell and writhing
snakes sprung up. Andromeda was supposedly tied up at Haifa,
in Israel. Two of the Rivers of Paradise run though Iraq,
where astrology was born (Tigris and Euphrates: Genesis,
Ch.2). Mercury concerns writing and communication, and in
Baghdad people queued to see a six hundred page copy of the
Koran written with Saddam's own blood. He donated it, a
half-litre at a time, over three years, by way of expressing
thanks to Allah for reaching his 60th birthday.

Ariel
Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, has his Moon on Algol and
conjunct the Sun of Israel (the latter being two degrees away
from Algol). He is known for comments like, "The Palestinians
must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them
losses, victims, so that they can feel the heavy price"[28] - a propos of the March 2002 re-invasion of
the Occupied Territories.

The name of the star derives
from the Arabic, ghoul, reflecting its near eclipse
every few days; and the medical term Algology (from the
Latin) means 'the study of pain'.[29] It has been viewed as "the most evil,
violent, and dangerous star in the heavens"[30], but maybe we ought today to try and
appreciate more the vivid and intense creative power that it
can bring to those touched by it. One could say that it
awakens us to the darker chords of life's symphony, and if so
May 16 is a day to ponder such matters, as the Sun crosses its
longitude.

... when the Gorgon Arrived and ripped
her face off And threw it to the floor. Such a
shocking Beauty born.

This essay has been inspired by the section
on Algol in Diana Rosenberg's Fixed
Stars and Constellations website. I stayed within 1½°
of orb, and have only used conjunctions and not other aspects
(eg, the 'Ripper' murders began on 31 August, 1888 the body
being found at 3.45 am with throat cut: Algol opposite Mars to
½° orb - would you count that?) Can we face the petrifying
truth? Or will Athene's mirror that Perseus used enable us to
reflect upon it?

Nick Kollerstrom
has a Cambridge science degree and has worked as a physics
schoolteacher. He is recognised throughout the astrological
community for his pioneering studies that have brought his
scientific background into exciting fields of research on
planets, plants and metals. He has been actively involved in
the study of planet-metal associations and other matters of a
Hermatic nature for 30 years, and has lectured on these
subjects since 1975. His work in medical research resulted in
his book Lead on the Brain - a plain guide to Britain's No
1 pollutant. His investigation of lunar effects upon plant
growth led in the 1980s to his gardener's guide Planting by
the Moon and the popular annuals Gardening and Planting
by the Moon. Nick Kollerstrom's latest title, Crop
Circles: The Hidden Form, published by Wessex books,
offers a new way of experiencing the crop circle mystery,
through the geometry of the forms revealed in crops.

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